


Spy in Disguises

by Ferrero13



Category: Spies In Disguise (2019)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canon-Typical Bad Science, Getting Together, M/M, Temporary Aged-Up, Temporary Genderbending, temporary de-aging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:41:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22043491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferrero13/pseuds/Ferrero13
Summary: 5 times Walter disguised himself on a mission with Lance and 1 time he didn’t.Vietnamese translation
Relationships: Lance Sterling/Walter Beckett
Comments: 29
Kudos: 637





	Spy in Disguises

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how old Lance or Walter are, but I’m going with them being in their late and early 20s respectively in the movie. Also, if anyone else noticed how iffy the science in the movie was, high-five. But a highly fictionalised take on genome and epigenome editing aside, the movie was great. (Update: I’ve since learnt that Walter is 20 in the movie but Lance’s age is still a mystery.)
> 
> Re the fic's timeline, note that there's a difference of about 1 to 2 years between each part and the next.
> 
> And re the title, yeah that was an intentional butchering of the movie’s title.

1\. Pigeon

Lance doesn’t recognise this pigeon.

Well, okay, it’s not like Lance knows all the pigeons in the States personally. However, he does have a pretty good idea of what the pigeons that desecrate the heads of Abraham Lincoln statues nation-wide are like. Lance has seen and heard his fair share of odd pigeons in his time working with Walter, but this weird warbling sound definitely isn’t factory default.

The pigeon in front of him doesn’t sound anything like a pigeon. It doesn’t walk like a pigeon. It doesn’t even _sit_ like a pigeon.

Are pigeons even capable of _slouching_? Because this one is slouching enough to rival the hunchback of Notre Dame.

In fact, if Lance were to make a bold and very educated guess based on both his pigeon-experience and his Walter-experience, this pigeon looks, walks, and sits exactly like Walter.

“What are you doing here?” Lance asks, approximately 99.741% certain that the pigeon currently trying to find a comfortable position to roost in is his erstwhile partner-in-kindness. He’s had a lot of time in the last few months to observe Walter’s atrocious posture, which he’s sure is what’s making pigeon-Walter look like he has broken his spine.

Pigeon-Walter makes an aborted squawk, then says, “Am I that obvious?”

“Yes,” Lance says flatly. “The wild, curly feathers are also a dead giveaway.”

Walter self-consciously pats the top of his head with his wings. The curly feathers continue to defy gravity.

“Stop that,” Lance hisses as well as his beak would allow. Pigeons don’t fix their head feathers with their wings, regardless of how long or messy they are. “And fix your posture. Have you ever seen a pigeon with a spine made of silly string?”

Walter twists where he’s half-sitting, contorting into all sorts of increasingly bizarre shapes.

Lance watches in horrified awe. “Do you even _have_ a spine?” he whispers.

“Pretty sure I do. Doesn’t feel like it though,” Walter grunts, and finally settles into an acceptable approximation of a typical pigeon bearing, although his legs are still positioned in a way that looks incredibly uncomfortable. Lance chooses not to say anything about that. One has to pick their battles with Walter wisely, especially when it comes to simple physical feats that Walter alone doesn’t seem capable of achieving. Lance would be the first to vouch for Walter’s ability to break all laws of physics and biology seemingly effortlessly, but the things that come naturally to most people appear to perpetually evade him.

“You know what, maybe you should leave the pigeon thing to me,” Lance eventually says, his brain failing to wrap around pigeon-Walter’s apparent bonelessness despite being very much used to human-Walter’s flailing rubber limbs. “Try another disguise next time. Perhaps a human.”

Pigeon-Walter coos once—finally, a proper pigeon noise—then earnestly starts making plans for a human disguise.

They have a long night of surveillance and reconnaissance ahead of them, so Lance makes himself comfortable next to Walter, noting distantly that Walter has chosen to sit right next to him so that their wings are pressed together.

‘Well,’ Lance thinks fondly. ‘It is a cold night after all.’

* * *

2\. Old man

“Oh, no. Please tell me this isn’t your ‘great idea.’ Are you planning on chasing Thompson with those knees?” Lance hisses when an old man wearing Walter’s watch lowers himself gingerly onto the park bench next to him, his speed and dexterity entirely in line with someone with advanced arthritis. “Also, didn’t anybody ever teach you how to disguise your tech as well? You might as well be waving a neon sign!”

“You mean my watch?” Walter asks. He pulls the sleeve of his button-up over it and does up the cuff, then flashes Lance a wide smile. “There! Easy peasy.”

“And your arthritis?” If Walter doesn’t have a solution for his creaky knees Lance is _so_ going to bench him for the rest of the mission. To hell with Marcy’s ever annoying reminder that Lance is Walter’s sidekick, not the other way around.

“I don’t actually have arthritis. At least, the subject I obtained this DNA sample from didn’t have arthritis, so I don’t expect to suddenly develop it within the next few hours. I’m working on matching my behaviours with my disguise. Or, well, matching my disguise with my behaviour, I guess, since I’ve been working on fixing my slouch _forever_ and still haven’t gotten anywhere,” Walter explains in his overly eager and overly young voice. “Pretty good, isn't it? Managed to fool you!”

“Yes, ha ha, very funny, good job, well done,” Lance deadpans. “But your voice still sounds like a 15-year-old navigating the onset of puberty.”

Walter wrinkles his nose. His voice is a sore point for him. That, and his height. Lance is well aware of both, but they’re not _so_ sore that Walter can’t take a little teasing. “Hey, some people are just naturally youthful for longer!”

“Tell that to the next cashier that cards you when you’re on alcohol duty for the next party,” Lance says as he allows Walter to hook an arm around his elbow on the pretence that his geriatric body has terrible balance.

* * *

3\. Teenager

It’s possible that Walter is doing this to spite Lance.

Lance didn’t realise that he’s stopped thinking of Walter as a boy until Walter showed up literally looking like he’s still going through puberty. It’s been two years since they started working together, and in that time Walter has finally grown into his large ears and even larger nose. Oh, he’s still short, there’s no doubt about that, but two years on active field duty has worn away whatever childhood fat that had managed to linger until drinking age. While Walter will never be as bulky as Lance, the definition he’s gained in the last two years has done wonders to stop him from getting carded.

The change was so gradual that Lance hadn’t even noticed it. But it’s kind of hard to _not_ notice the difference when the Walter standing before him is giving him major flashbacks to the scrawny boy he first met after his bomb was replaced with the recently patented Kitty Glitter™.

“Why are you a teenager?”

Walter makes an unnaturally wide, closed-mouth smile that reeks of ‘I did something wrong but I’m gonna fix it I promise I won’t make black muck again.’ “I tried to modify my epigenetic markers to be consistent with being thirty but accidentally went in the other direction instead and now I’m sixteen again?”

“Is that a question or an explanation?”

“An explanation?” Walter says, and his voice breaks on the last syllable.

It’s not convincing at all.

But that’s fine. They’re at a family restaurant and it really doesn’t matter how old Walter is unless he’s planning to be an infant, in which case Lance thinks even Director Jenkins would agree that Walter should be struck off the duty roster.

“If it’s any consolation, this disguise fits your personality and mannerisms much better than the time you transformed into an old man.”

Lance kind of misses the usual Walter, though. He’s getting a little too old to be seen eating with a teenager without raising some eyebrows, but he’s not old enough that anyone would think that the teenager is his son.

He tries to sling an arm around Walter’s shoulders the way he usually does when he has to tap morse code onto Walter’s skin, but misses because he’s used to Walter having significantly broader shoulders. Walter barely even notices when Lance’s arm lands on his newly skinny hip. But then, Walter’s never really been a fan of personal space to begin with, and any remaining sense of personal space disappeared entirely after the mission where they’d had to share a bed. Walter’s hip is warm, pleasantly so against the broad surface of Lance’s hand, and he doesn’t really want to let go, but he does anyway.

Because even if Walter doesn’t notice or care, everyone around them _does_ since Walter barely looks half of Lance's age.

Yeah, Lance _really_ misses Walter looking his age.

* * *

4\. Aged up

‘I see you successfully figured out aging,’ Lance taps in morse code, admiring the details of Walter’s disguise as they make a circuit around the gala arm in arm so that they’re in convenient reach of each other for non-verbal communication.

The crow’s feet at the corners of Walter’s eyes crinkle when he laughs sheepishly, his unfamiliarly calloused hands twitching twice as he resists the urge to scratch the back of his head in high society. ‘Not exactly,’ Walter taps back. ‘It’s more like...time travel?’

Lance pauses. ‘You’re from the future?’

‘Me? No. This body? Yes. I was too close to a prototype time machine when I tested the formula. This body belongs to some version of me from the future. From telomere length estimates, I’m placing it around forty years old.’

‘Huh. You’re much older than I am. This is new.’ Lance traces the new scars on the back of Walter’s hands, nearly unnoticeable if not for how they’re just that little bit shinier than the rest of his skin. On one hand, a spy that lives to forty is worth his salt and Lance is glad to know that Walter survives until middle age, but on the other hand the number of scars on Walter’s right hand alone (as well as the strands of grey on his 40-year-old head) is somewhat concerning.

‘I even have his physical memories so I’ll probably be a much better fighter than I usually am, courtesy of fifteen more years of experience,’ Walter adds.

He also has a much better poker face, Lance observes. Walter barely even twitches when the billionaire they’re talking to makes an off-handed remark about how good they look together and her wife asks about their wedding anniversary plans.

Or perhaps it has something to do with this being the twelfth time someone they’ve talked to has asked about their non-existent marriage.

Because everyone thinks Walter is his husband.

Which frankly is not only ridiculous but also unthinkable since Lance is only just coming to terms with the new dimensions to his fondness for Walter, a dimension that goes beyond friendship and professional respect.

While it’s definitely better than everyone thinking that Walter is his underaged sugar baby, it’s not better by much. The thing is, Lance doesn’t mind being perceived as Walter’s husband. In fact, he minds so little that one might say that he’s even encouraging the assumption by holding him closer than is strictly necessary for communication by morse code. But now Lance has to deal with knowing what it’s like to have the world acknowledge them as a couple without actually _being_ a couple. It’s like scratching an itch that only gets worse with every scratch.

Lance shakes himself out of his thoughts when, from the corner of his eyes, he sees one of their targets leave through a concealed exit.

“I’m getting a little lightheaded. Mind if I take a breather?” Lance whispers to Walter, pitching his voice just loud enough to be overheard by Mrs. and Mrs. Coleman-Liu and allowing all of his fondness to shine through when he smiles at Walter. There aren’t many situations in which he’s allowed to be honest about his feelings for Walter and he plans to make the most of this opportunity. In the meantime, he taps out, ‘Target one has left the premises. I’ll follow him. Keep an eye on the other one for me.’

“No problem.” Walter smiles back at him, and Lance must be imagining the way it’s softer than it usually is, the way it perfectly accounts for all of the new creases on his skin.

To their conversation partners, Lance says, “Excuse me for a moment. I need to get some fresh air.” Then, to Walter, “I’ll see you in a bit, honey.”

“Alright, sweetheart,” Walter says and then—

And then he drops a kiss on Lance’s cheek.

Lance’s face burns as he turns away to follow his target.

He can’t tell if the kiss was part of their improvised cover or if it was something else Walter’s 40-year-old body remembers, but he knows which he’s hoping for.

He’d like to be there for every grey hair, to be the reason for every laugh line.

If Walter will let him, he can’t wait to see how they get to this point in fifteen years.

* * *

5\. Female

Director Jenkins is testing him.

That is the only reason Lance can think of to explain why Walter is currently a slim woman in 3 inch heels sitting in his lap. It was endearing when Walter was a skinny, gangly 20-year-old, animated and rambling and so wonderfully alive when Lance had spent the few hours before warding off images of his pale, lifeless body tossed like a ragdoll upon choppy waves.

But right now, it’s not so much endearing as driving him absolutely _crazy_.

Oh god, that slinky number does nothing to hide the curve of Walter’s ass on his thighs. Lance is going to place a non-negotiable ban on any slinky dresses _forever_. Especially in disguises that look almost uncannily like Walter swapped his Y chromosome out for an X chromosome instead of adopting the appearance of a completely different person. Lance can handle attractive women—in fact, Lance has managed to remain unaffected by exponentially more attractive women throwing themselves at him throughout his illustrious career, and Walter shouldn’t even register as a blip on his radar.

And yet, Walter does. In any and every shape, he does. And in _this_ shape in particular, a shape that Lance hasn’t yet learnt to be immune to, a shape wrapped up in fabric so fine that Walter in his normal, male shape would never choose to wear, he’s going to give Lance a heart attack. The way the slit of his dress falls to reveal his naked thighs...sweet mother of pigeon-kind, someone _please_ put Lance out of his misery.

“What is this supposed to achieve?” Lance manages to say through gritted teeth. Pigeon lords, please grant him the patience and self-control required to last until the mission is over.

“Honestly? Not much. At least, not for this mission. I could impersonate any woman and it’ll work just as well. I’m just trying to see if I can change someone’s sex without changing anything else about them,” Walter says, tapping away at his tablet, eyes alight with excitement. “Of course, female-to-male transformations will require a donor Y chromosome, but that’s just a minor complication. With this, the age of hormone replacement therapies and invasive surgeries is over!”

His voice is different in a way that voice training rarely manages to accomplish. Higher, sweeter.

“And your voice?”

“One hundred percent a result of the transformation! You get to have brand new vocal cords with this new and improved formula!”

That brings Lance up short. “Wait. New vocal cords? Am I going to _sound_ like a pigeon the next time I transform?”

“Of course not,” Walter says indignantly, twisting around so that he can meet Lance’s eyes and gasp at him in mock offence. His dress follows the curve of his newly round hips, rippling like a pool of satin spilling over Walter’s thighs and down Lance’s legs. Every nerve ending on Lance’s lap is on fire and it’s all Walter goddamned Beckett’s fault. “You’ll keep using the old formula. I can’t speak pigeon when I’m human and I don’t think you’re going to be any good at charades when you have wings for hands.”

“Thank goodness.” And for lack of anything better to say, Lance adds. “Do you need your makeup touched up or are you really going to have dinner with the best spy in the best restaurant looking like you haven’t slept in five days?”

“What?! Really?” Walter pulls up a mirror from his watch.

“Yeah.”

“I could’ve sworn that I hid my eyebags properly. Marcy even helped me out.”

Is it bad that Lance is jealous? Yes. It’s bad that Lance is jealous. Lance has never been jealous of anyone in his entire life. Why would he? He’s got everything.

Everything except Walter’s attention.

Well, okay. Walter notices him plenty, but would it kill Walter to notice him in any capacity other than his work partner?

“Here, let me help you,” Lance offers, pulling a compact makeup kit from his inner pocket. He always carries a spare for Walter’s complexion because Walter rarely thinks about anything beyond his latest experiment.

“Why do you have that with you?”

“Because _you_ don’t have one with you. And for god’s sake have some class and pull on a pantyhose.”

‘And preferably also a pair of your usual jeans and a sweater,’ Lance adds mentally, then holds Walter’s face steady so that he can remove all of the makeup and reapply it in a way that would make him a dozen times less sweetly attractive. Perhaps a more severe look, something like Marcy or Director Jenkins, would stop Lance from getting distracted every two seconds.

“You know what else is cool about this new formula?” Walter sighs dreamily, clearly not done gushing about his new formula, as Lance cleans the gloss off his lips. “The plumbing works like it’s au naturel.”

Lance chokes.

* * *

+1. Himself

Lance has never considered himself much of a glasses man, but he thinks he might just join the club when Walter slides smoothly into the passenger seat wearing a pair of browline glasses.

“Bad eyesight?” he asks, then mentally bangs his head onto the steering wheel. Oh, real smooth, Sterling. Way to go. Insults would definitely win him brownie points with the man he’s very unfortunately quite gone for.

Walter fidgets in his seat, shoulders hunching into the horrible slouch that he’d trained out of himself so many years ago around the time he spent three days as a 40-year-old. “Does it look bad?” he says, eyes darting all over the dashboard but never meeting Lance’s.

Lance winces at the uncertainty in Walter’s voice. Walter has progressed to wringing his hands and biting his lips so hard that Lance can almost feel his own lips split in sympathy. It doesn’t look bad at all. It looks like the very opposite of bad. It is very much not bad. Too much not bad, in fact.

It looks so good that Lance foresees himself getting very distracted on this mission.

“I knew it. It looks bad, doesn’t it? I knew it couldn’t be right,” Walter mutters, curling in even more into himself and angling his face away from Lance.

“Hey, no! It looks great!” Lance assures him, because it _does_ —and _Walter_ does—and bidding a tearful farewell to his concentration for the rest of the mission is a small price to pay when Walter looks this self-conscious.

Walter isn’t a self-conscious person, not by a long shot. If he were, he wouldn’t be wearing his weirdness as a badge of honour. If he were, they wouldn’t be work partners now because he wouldn’t have had the courage to swap out Lance’s bomb for Kitty Glitter™.

So the fact that Walter _is_ self-conscious right now is worrying.

“You’re just saying it to make me feel better,” Walter says, sighing. But at least he’s not hiding from Lance anymore so that has to count for something.

“I mean, I _am_ saying it to make you feel better, but I’m not saying it _just_ for that. You do look good in them.”

“You think so?”

“I know so,” Lance says firmly, and reaches out to lay an assuring hand on Walter’s shoulder.

After a heartbeat, Walter’s usual goofy grin curls on his lips again. And after another heartbeat, it softens into something shyer. 

“That’s good. Because the body of 40-year-old me was really insistent that you’d like it and it’d be terrible if I couldn’t even understand myself.”

Lance’s heart lurches into his throat and lodges there, threatening to beat out of him. If the body remembered such a minor detail, if it remembered this minor detail so well that it stuck in Walter’s mind years after the event, could Lance dare to hope that it’s because Lance and his definitely-not-relevant-to-any-missions soft spots are important to 40-year-old Walter?

He takes a breath, and he takes a leap of faith.

“What else did it insist I like?”

Lance looks Walter straight in the eye and silently begs Walter not to misinterpret what he means.

For a second, Lance hopes. But when the second passes and Walter doesn’t say or do anything, he lets out the breath he held and swiftly shifts to deflection, “Nevermind. I’m sure you’ve read the mission brief but let’s go through it again to ensure that we’re on the same page—”

A sudden warmth against the palm of his hand startles him into silence.

Walter has slipped his hand into Lance’s, smoothly and unquestioningly as he usually does when he invades Lance’s personal space. (Although, of course, it’s not really much of an invasion if Lance _lets_ him every time.)

“It also insisted that you like this.”

Lance takes a moment to gather his wits and come to terms with the fact that yes, this is real. Yes, this is finally happening.

“Anything else?” he breathes almost reverently, spreading his fingers and slotting them between Walter’s. He feels his disbelief give way to awe when Walter’s fingers curl around his.

“This, too,” Walter says, his nose brushing Lance’s cheek and giving way to a soft press of lips.

“And this.” Walter slides both of their seats back and slips with practised ease into Lance’s lap.

“And most of all,” Walter continues, eyes bright and smile wide, “me.”

* * *

+Bonus: 25 years old

“You look...different today,” Lance says groggily when he wakes up to see Walter stepping out of the shower with a towel around his hips, drying his hair with another.

His completely brown hair.

His completely brown hair that isn’t dripping water onto his glasses because he’s not wearing glasses.

“I think my 25-year-old self borrowed my body so I’m 25 for the next three days.” A slow smile spreads across Walter’s face as he watches Lance sit up straighter in their bed. “Want to take advantage of it?”

Lance swallows heavily. “I’ll let Marcy know that we’ll be taking some of our accumulated leave now.”

**Author's Note:**

> If female pigeon-Lance can lay an egg, does this mean that female-Walter can get pregnant? 🤔


End file.
